Industry intelligence
CONTRACT BOOST FOR ORDER BOOK Concor Infrastructure, previously known as Murray & Roberts Infrastructure, recently secured two significant contracts in the mining sector. According to Eric Wisse, managing director at Concor, the company is well positioned to take advantage of the recently increased optimism in the mining space. Concor Infrastructure is part of Concor Construction, which was acquired by a consortium led by the Southern Palace Group.
Concor Infrastructure was awarded the Belfast Implementation Project for Exxaro’ s new coal operation in Mpumalanga. This 22-month contract comprises major bulk earthworks and civil infrastructure that will be the enabling works for the mining operation. It also includes the upgrading of a provincial gravel road to surfaced standard that will facilitate access to the mine.
“ We also secured the contract for the earthworks and civils for the box cut at Ivanhoe Mines’ Platreef Mine in Limpopo,” says Wisse. This is the first step of the Shaft 2 Project, and site mobilisation of Concor Infrastructure’ s team has already begun.
Shaft 2 will become the main production shaft for Platreef. The company’ s initial scope of work will require the excavation of a surface box cut to 29m below surface, and the construction of a concrete hitch for the head frame. This 103m-structure will house the shaft’ s permanent hoisting facilities and support the shaft collar.
Advice for SA
Clem Sunter, futurologist and scenario specialist.
South Africa’ s‘ pockets of excellence’ need to be carefully protected and nurtured if the country wants to remain a competitive player in the global economy. This is according to futurist and scenario specialist Clem Sunter.
Sunter was speaking at explosives company BME’ s annual conference in Pretoria last year.“ South Africa has a number of pockets of excellence that can set us apart,” said Sunter,“ but we need to replicate these.”
He was concerned about the state of the country’ s universities and emphasised that they needed to continue providing not just relevant skills, but cutting edge technologies that could keep the economy competitive.
His observations meshed well with the earlier comments made by BME’ s general manager for South Africa, Albie Visser, who had reflected on the pace of technological development in BME— which works closely with universities in its innovation efforts— in just the past five years. The continual upgrading of the AXXIS electronic detonation system, a market-leading technology regarded as the‘ pride of BME’, facilitated a record blast at Zambia’ s Kansanshi Mine with 6 690 detonators.
BME
Bushveld unleashes its vanadium battery
Bushveld Energy, a subsidiary of Bushveld Minerals, has deployed its first vanadium redox flow battery( VRFB) in South Africa. According to Fortune Mojapelo, CEO of Bushveld Minerals, the system will be deployed together with Eskom, the South African national power utility, at its Research, Testing, and Development( RT & D) Centre in Rosherville, South Africa. This follows Eskom’ s identification of the potential need for more than 2 000MW of additional balanced energy storage per day within the existing grid.
The project is co-developed by Bushveld Energy and the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa( IDC), and will allow Eskom to test the VRFB and its performance and applications under numerous simulations. This will include minimum load shifting, wind generation smoothing, solar generation smoothing, power quality improvement, and self-black-start capability. The VRFB commissioning is expected in the first half of 2018.
Mojapelo says that this deployment is a critical stepping stone for both Bushveld Energy and the energy storage market in South Africa.“ This project brings new technology to South Africa to make the local power system more efficient and, more importantly, create a new industry to not only supply South Africa, but offer significant export potential as well. We are pleased to bring all the key stakeholders together in this effort,” says Mojapelo.
According to the International Renewable Energy Association( IRENA), VRFBs already offer some of the lowest system costs among battery technologies and are expected to decrease in cost by 66 % through to 2030, which is faster than any other technology in energy storage.
With the stationary energy storage market rapidly growing and, according to Navigant Research, expected to exceed USD25-billion in annual revenues by 2025, South Africa is extremely well positioned to participate in this market by virtue of holding the second-largest reserves of vanadium in the world in the Bushveld Complex.
A recent study of energy storage in South Africa commissioned by the IDC and the United States Trade and Development Agency( USTDA) confirmed“ the relative ease of vanadium electrolyte production and the availability of vanadium in South Africa further enhancing the attractiveness of this specific flow technology.” Based on a cooperation agreement signed in 2016, Bushveld Energy and the IDC are working jointly to bring significant portions of the VRFB value chain to South Africa.
[ 4 ] MINING MIRROR FEBRUARY 2018